Rob Fischer is the Digital Marketing Manager at Stratco Australia, one of the largest producers and marketers of quality building and home improvement products in Australia.
In this article, Supply Chain caught up with Rob to talk about his passion and extensive experience in the marketing world, how they address logistical challenges at Stratco, and what it’s like to manage digital marketing for a company of Stratco’s scale.
Q: You’ve founded a movement that allows Australian businesses to promote themselves and at the same time you’ve had an extensive experience in Digital Marketing. Can you tell us what made you choose this career path?
A: I’ve always had an interest in business and management with a desire for influence and a passion for leading people. A lot of this comes from seeing my parents run their own business. I also have a great mentor who provided some guidance. You can’t just do a management degree and start your career leading people; you need to master discipline and lead people have developed expertise.
Marketing has given me a path into management and with an interest in technology, websites and social media I’ve gravitated towards digital marketing. I also have a desire to help people and do some good in the world and I love living in Adelaide. Adelaide Random Giveaways has been a great way of utilising my digital marketing skills to give back to my local community.
Q: What’s it like to manage Digital Marketing for Stratco?
A: Stratco is a phenomenal business, every day brings new opportunities and challenges. We’re a retailer and a manufacturer with B2B and B2C customers. We generate leads, we sell online and we have retail outlets all over Australia, plus international operations.
With responsibility for marketing automation, email marketing, sms marketing, e-commerce, lead generation, online advertising, reputation management, social media and more, having a great internal team, selecting the right technology stack and selecting the right partners is critical to being successful.
Q: How does the company maintain a high-performing marketing team and customer engagement, especially in the digital platforms?
A: The breadth of opportunity in Stratco allows our marketing team to get involved in a variety of campaigns and tasks. We’re open to testing and learning from new ideas, actively encouraging our team to be innovative. When the team brings ideas to the table, we’ll do our best to support them and allow them to run with their own initiative. Providing autonomy and support has enabled us to retain and develop a collaborative and high-performing marketing team.
Q: Can you provide examples of logistical challenges that Stratco has experienced in the past and how you solved them?
A: As a leading supplier of patios, sheds, roofing and fencing throughout Australia, getting items to the customer on time, in full and without damage in a cost-effective manner is a challenge. My involvement in logistics has been specifically around the fulfilment of e-commerce orders, which could mean delivery of anything from a packet of screws a few kilometres away to a large patio in remote communities.
We are still working through how we best solve these challenges, looking for partners we can work with and developing our internal capabilities. We are having some success working with both shipping aggregators and delivery partners on developing solutions tailored to the unique needs of our business.